No abstract

This essay discusses the negotiation of postal contracts between the government and the private sector, and asks whether the state provided private sector shipping companies with excess returns. The essay also describes the operation of Royal Mail’s mail contracts and the development of its non-contract revenues; its commercial and financial returns, and finally compares its results with financial returns in the second half of the 19th century.

The 1870s were a decade of crisis and change in the Peruvian economy. Guano, the bulk of Peru's exports, no longer dominated the republic's trade and finance as it had for thirty years. Quantity, quality and markets persistently declined from the peaks of the 1850s and 1860s. Two new growth sectors, however, increasingly diversified Peru's commercial pattern. On plantations in the north sugar production quadrupled between 1873 and 1876, overhauling cotton and wool among exports. At the same time, in the southernmost province of Tarapacá nitrate extraction and manufacture steadily increased.

No abstract

No abstract